Circular urbanism
Strategic optimization of construction costs and embodied carbon for economic resilience and sustainable development
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21477121 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Siavash Ghorbany (0000-0002-9588-0527, University of Notre Dame, corresponding author), Ming Hu (0000-0003-2583-1161, University of Notre Dame), Siyuan Yao (0000-0002-4093-193X, University of Notre Dame), Matthew Sisk (0000-0002-4141-9655, University of Notre Dame), Chaoli Wang (0000-0002-0859-3619, University of Notre Dame) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 120 |
| Pages | 108459 |
| Publication date | 2026-07-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Impact Assessment Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0195-9255 • E-ISSN: 1873-6432 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.eiar.2026.108459 |
| OpenAlex | W7152100568 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 44 |
As cities race to meet climate targets, embodied carbon—the greenhouse gas emissions embedded in building materials and construction—has emerged as a critical yet underexplored dimension of urban sustainability. This study presents a scalable, data-driven framework based on urban-scale building stock virtual twins for the first time, optimizing embodied carbon across diverse urban areas in the United States. Using a bottom-up, archetype-based model integrated with a constrained greedy heuristic algorithm, we analyzed 200,000 buildings each in Baltimore, Miami, and Las Vegas, representing historical, balanced, and modern urban typologies. Our findings reveal that less than 20% of archetypes—corresponding to approximately 15–40% of the building stock—account for over 80% of total embodied emissions and construction costs, underscoring the viability of precision-targeted, archetype-level interventions. Post-optimization results demonstrate up to 63% cost savings and 60% emission reductions, achieved without compromising local architectural character. Temporal analysis of material flow further suggests that optimization patterns often align with periods of infrastructure investment or economic downturn—pointing to a novel hypothesis: that embodied carbon strategies may also support urban economic resilience. This study introduces the concept of an “optimization core”—a high-impact subset of building types that, when retrofitted, unlock nonlinear gains in cost, carbon, and planning flexibility. The study results are theoretical and scenario-based as it evaluates how the existing building stock could have achieved lower embodied GHG and cost through feasible, locally realistic archetype substitutions, and thereby quantifying missed potential and providing forward-looking guidance for new construction and targeted retrofits
Embodied cognition · Psychological resilience · Sustainability · Sustainable development · Environmental Impact and Sustainability · Sustainability and Ecological Systems Analysis · Sustainable Building Design and Assessment
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| Highly cited | No |
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